The day after Travis Ford left the University of Massachusetts men's basketball program, I was called by talking heads at three Oklahoma radio stations, asking me what kind of coach Oklahoma State was getting.

I told them they would not regret it. Ford was good, having nearly won the NIT without a true center.

On Friday in Dayton, Ohio, Ford's No. 9-seeded Cowboys will play Tennessee in the NCAA tournament. If they win, No. 1-seeded Pittsburgh figures to be next.

II wonder how UMass fans will react if Ford's team makes an NCAA run. Most will probably care only in how it affects their brackets.

Ford is part of UMass history, not a current event.

Ford also has skeptics in high places. In his bracket for ESPN.com, President Obama first had Oklahoma State, then scratched it out and put in Tennessee.

But Ford's team intrigues me, because of how much his Cowboys resemble his Minutemen.

Oklahoma State (22-11) averaged 81 points, the same as Ford's last UMass team did.

No regular is taller than 6-foot-8, but just as UMass did, the Cowboys cause matchup problems at the perimeter.

They put up 24 3-pointers per game, 178 more than their opponents tried, and 94 more than last year's pre-Ford Cowboys did.

In his first year, Ford took an NIT-level team to the NCAA tournament. Any way you cut it, he has done a terrific job.

I left a message on Ford's cell phone this week. He did not respond.

But I still like the man, however awkward his exit. So what if he made the NCAA field at Eastern Kentucky (2005) and Oklahoma-State (2009), but not at UMass in 2006, '07 and '08?

So what if Oklahoma State won two games in the Big 12 tournament, two more than Ford won in three Atlantic 10 tourneys at UMass?

Ford vamoosed for a whopper deal: seven years, $9 million. The only reason UMass fans were irate he left was because he was good, right?

That's flattery, dressed as indignation.

I'd much rather see Ford in the Big Dance than, say, Kentucky's Billy Gillispie, who stiffed UMass on a committed game in Boston in 2007.

Delightfully, Gillispie is now reportedly on the ropes after backpedaling his program, which considers an NCAA spot a birthright, into the NIT.

Ford's abrupt exit led to the only rough press he got at UMass. Compared to Coach Cal, he got off easy even there.

But he knows his stuff, and I wouldn't mind seeing his team win a couple. If he ever gets around to returning my phone call, I might even start hoping he wins the whole thing.

That might not mean much in Stillwater, Okla., but it's more than the President is doing.